Rogers sees 35% increase in iPhone activations since last year

Rogers reported their financial results for the first quarter of 2012 this morning, and cited an increase of 35% in iPhone sales compared to Q1 2011, which is a marked step up from the 20% average growth among all of their smartphones. Of course, the raw number of sales aren't even as exciting as Sprint's financials; Rogers sold a grand total of 642,000 smartphones in the quarter and saw a 7% shrink in net wireless income compared to last year. Here are the highlights.

Rogers said that the ongoing demand for the iPhone 4S is partly because inventory was shy during the Q4 2011 launch. Even though the smaller carriers, like WIND and Mobilicity, don't have an AWS-capable iPhone to sell, Rogers reported a decrease in prepaid subscribers due to "heightened competitive intensity". Rogers enjoyed a 16% increase in data revenue, and even with a decline in voice revenue, the average revenue per smartphone user was about twice that of anyone with voice only.

LTE expansion is continuing, and Rogers intends to blanket 60% of Canadians by the end of the year. Right now 12 million people are in Rogers LTE coverage, which is 35% of our population up here. Right now, that's only an issue for the LTE iPad and can make things tricky when trying to pick which carrier to go with, but seeing as most new iPad usage is on Wi-Fi, it's not a problem everyone will have.

Finally, if you happen to be a shareholder, Rogers announced that they'd be dishing out a dividend of 39.5 cents per share. Woo.

We have yet to hear from Bell or TELUS about their first quarter of the new year; anyone taking bets on how well the other big two are doing for Q1?